“Browsing the Internet I found out that Wednesday marked the 54th birthday of Col. Elpidio Valdés of the Liberation Army, with whom many generations have grown up. Along with this brave mambi fighter, his girlfriend Maria Silvia, and his horse Palmiche, we would often shout, ‘Long live free Cuba!’,” ,” he wrote.

Elpidio Valdés was created on August 14, 1970 by caricaturist, illustrator, comic strip artist and scriptwriter Juan Padrón, who said he was working on a comic strip of the samurai Kashibashi for a children’s magazine in which a 19th century Cuban appeared that he portrayed as a mambi fighter.

“I named him Elpidio Valdés so that he would resemble [Cuban renowned book character] Cecilia Valdés, and I drew him without a sketch at first. The main character was Kashibashi, but because of the things I made this guy Elpidio say he was definitely funnier than the Japanese samurai, so I turned the 12 pages I had already designed and started all over again with Elpidio as the main character,” he remarked.